Thousands of miles from home, 18-year-old Anna Reichartz is
finishing her junior year in high school, studying calculus, an
active member of the varsity girls’ water polo team and lighting
technician for the drama guild’s spring production.
Morgan Hill – Thousands of miles from home, 18-year-old Anna Reichartz is finishing her junior year in high school, studying calculus, an active member of the varsity girls’ water polo team and lighting technician for the drama guild’s spring production.
“You certainly don’t have the school spirit there that you see here,” she said, commenting on the difference between high school life here and in Germany. “Here you very much identify yourself with your school, but it’s not like that at all there.”
There is a difference in the way the classes are structured, too, she said. At her high school in Germany, she has 45-minute classes from 7:45am to 1:45pm, and the students don’t change classes, the teachers do.
“It’s a different class system, you spend the whole day together as a class, like a block schedule,” she said.
The educational emphasis is different, too, she said.
“Basically, if you’re a good student, if you do your homework and turn it in, you have no problems making A’s here,” she said. “Well, I guess I shouldn’t say it’s easy, I have calculus and that’s hard. But in my high school, you do your homework, but it’s not collected and you don’t get points for it. They expect you to participate in class more. And we have three big exams each year for each subject, really big exams with never any multiple choice questions.”
She said she was surprised at what extra-curricular high school life is like, with the variety of sports activities and clubs. High schools back home don’t have that, she said.
That’s one of the things she enjoys about life in Morgan Hill, she said. She also thinks Morgan Hill is a friendly town and a beautiful place to live. She enjoys running and walking around town, often taking the dogs belonging to Lori Jones, her host mother.
“My host mom is just so amazing, she is so generous,” she said. “She has the biggest heart.”
Jones said she decided to become a host mom after seeing an ad for the exchange program.
“It has been a wonderful experience,” said Jones, who lives with her two dogs. “I would highly recommend it. Anna is a great girl, and we have gotten along very well.”
Anna arrived on Aug. 14, just in time for the start of school a week later. She said she feels like the time has flown by and realizes that soon it will be time to fly home. What she will miss most, she says, is the people, her host mother and all her friends on the water polo team and in her classes.
“I’ll miss the beautiful landscape, just looking out the window and seeing all the mountains and beautiful flowers,” she added. “And I’ll really miss playing water polo. It’s so amazing.”
She enjoyed it so much that she wants to find a team or form one herself when she returns to Germany, she said, even though she didn’t know much about the sport before coming here. Jones, whose nephew had played, recommended that Anna try it and see if she liked it.
Now Anna is thinking about her return to Germany, because it’s time for her to select classes for her 12th year. At her high school, she said, you have a 13th year before you graduate, and the classes during the last two years are “very important.” Then, she said, she will go on to study at a university.
Anna, besides speaking flawless English, is fluent in French and Dutch, speaks “a little Italian,” and has been studying Latin for five years.
“I would love to be a foreign correspondent,” she said. “I love foreign languages.”
